About Robert Pogson

I am a retired teacher in Canada. I taught in the subject areas where I have worked for almost forty years: maths, physics, chemistry and computers. I love hunting, fishing, picking berries and mushrooms, too.

52 Responses to Renewable Energy Becomes Mainstream

The Wiz wrote, “nor will it be anything that does anything more than once again, demonstrate how incredibly cheap you are.”

I love to make stuff. It’s therapy, recreation and gives me motivation. I build stuff that’s durable and works better than a lot of commercial stuff. Consider my rock-moving cart. It’s as good as new, saved us a ton of money and TLW loves her rocks. Again, I’m not cheap. I love to spend money. By spending wisely I can buy more stuff.

Another example, trees. TLW follows the Wiz’s school of thought and buys trees ready to plant. Last year she bought 30 Thuja occidentalis. It was a huge effort to plant them. Only a couple survived the winter. Now, we have to dig them up and she’s returning them for replacement under warranty. That’s a huge waste. Meanwhile seeds that I bought for pennies and grew in the pots of her dead trees are now ready to plant and surviving the winter. I think I’m better off doing things my way. It works for me.

On the subject of trees, I noticed TLW was out in the yard spraying weeds. She kindly shielded my trees with a guard showing she’s finally giving home-grown trees the respect they deserve. She’s seeing apples, plums, cherries and apricots growing over a foot this year that cost me only pennies and some loving. In a couple more years my trees will be feeding the extended family. TLW has already enjoyed my pumpkins, tomatoes, horseradish and lettuce. There’s more good news to come. Last year, she threatened to dig up my “unauthorized” planting.

But it will not be anything that anybody would want to imitate, nor will it be anything that does anything more than once again, demonstrate how incredibly cheap you are.

I also doubt Robert can understand the correlation between frugality and being cheap.

Frugal people know when to pay up, put people above savings and see the higher purpose. Whereas, with Robert, he sees everything as being overpriced (Eg. Monopolies) and doesn’t buy/use necessities (Eg. Using Toilet-paper).

Being cheap is about spending less. Those who are cheap are often afraid to spend money. They are willing to sacrifice quality, value and time in order to cash in on some short-term savings which most definitely does not often times lead to the best decisions in life.

“None of the units match my needs well for charging an EV or running something in an emergency, but it shows I can easily accomplish my goals by buying Chinese direct. ”

I seriously doubt that you will be able to match the quality and reliability of the commercial solar kit that you referenced, Robert Pogson. Oh, I have no doubt that you will be able to cobble something together from cheap Chinese parts. It may even work after a fashion with enough sh1t, spit and bailing wire applied.

But it will not be anything that anybody would want to imitate, nor will it be anything that does anything more than once again, demonstrate how incredibly cheap you are.

Another indication that solar is mainstream is that you can buy it at Home Depot, you know, the place where you can buy lumber and nails and just about anything a consumer needs to live somewhere in the modern economy. They sell complete off-grid systems, minus mounts and battery for ~$4 CDN/watt. Others sell similar kits for < $3CDN/watt. That’s not a great price but it is affordable for a cottage or a bit of backup power. None of the units match my needs well for charging an EV or running something in an emergency, but it shows I can easily accomplish my goals by buying Chinese direct. I can build my own inverter, mount and positioner too to save some cash. My main need is the solar panels.

Deaf Spy wrote, “are you trying to imply that one needs to do coding in order to update Debian? Poor Linux usersâ€¦”

Nope, but you do need to know some coding to run the mess of servers that I do for web, FTP, DHCP, database, etc. when migrating from one version to another from time to time. Standards evolve. Syntax changes. Stuff like that. I write in HTML every day on this blog, for instance.

Well, I have several neat welding tables, a cart finished and another on the go, a lifting frame…

I open-heartedly admit that I know nothing about welding. Therefore, I will give you that you did a great job with these.

Unfortunately, the scripts you mention and “a lot of maintenance coding on Beast like migrating to Debian Stretch and backing up TLWâ€™s files” can’t qualify as programming. This is basic user interaction.

Wait, are you trying to imply that one needs to do coding in order to update Debian? Poor Linux users…

So in short, all those items have decayed and become unusable, hence the multiple replacements. Which bring us full-circle to my original point, and making your point rather moot. That is, all things “slow down” in time.

Grece wrote nonsense, “you are not taking into account of hardware degradation in 3-5 years time”.

Beast is what, 11 years old in the CPU and about 8 on the motherboard. Meanwhile the clock keeps ticking over at 2.5gHz. The only degradation I’ve noticed is that one of the SATA ports objects at boot. It runs perfectly fine thereafter. I just want to use less power to do what Beast does now.

All computer owners are required to pay, one for the initial purchase, and second, for the on-going maintenance.

All things slow-down in time, even with computers. Yet again, an alleged physics teacher, conveys VERY CLEARLY, his lack of understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

So Robert, are you going to set there and tell us that Linux has no malware, never needs to boot/reboot, are free from purchase/maintenance and never run-down due to decay? If so, I believe the NSA would love to hear from you.

Ah yes, the work you supposedly did in October 2013. Oh, so much “more recent.” And your cite is (dishonestly, but slightly more honestly than you can manage right now) entitled “Progress Report.”

Well, I suppose zero progress is still, in some semantic way, progress of a sort. A little offensive that you are still titling it as “GEBC,” considering that there is an actual, functional, FLOSS program called “GEBC” out there, don’t you think, Bobbie?

As for the rest … you have to be the oldest, if not necessarily the most senile, script kiddie out there. None of that bash script rubbish qualifies as “programming.” None of it at all.

Nonsense. I don’t make much that isn’t useful. Tables that don’t wobble and allow me to stand upright while welding are precious. I like being able to see the light in my basement. I like having computers work for me and not against me.

Grece wrote off-topic, “71% Percent Canadians Donâ€™t Support The Payout To Omar Khadr”.

I doubt that’s true. No one asked me until now. I hate it when my government messes up and wastes money but I also hate it when they do the wrong thing. Both happened here. War brings out the worst in people. It’s not always their fault. Gitmo is a great abuse of human rights and I’m sad to say Canada had complicity in it.

Deaf Spy wrote, “show us something you did recently in terms of construction, electrical works, or programming.”

Well, I have several neat welding tables, a cart finished and another on the go, a lifting frame, wiring part of our basement, and numerous scripts and applications. Too many to show all of them but you’ve seen some of them here.

You can see one of the welding tables here. It’s a three-legged table made from T-bars of scrap metal. I used to carefully line things up with a square but I figured out how to make them more or less perfect using symmetry. The triangular top is naturally perfect. It has no choices but I tack-weld the legs and they go together pretty well when their edges are drawn together. The tables never wobble, although the legs will sink in the mud if not supported by a small pad of stone. I use them to make tables in my workshop and to support the flats in my greenhouse. That link also shows my lifting frame which was built to assemble a Chinese tractor and which works well with the cart to move TLW’s rocks around. Here’s TLW driving the tractor. She wasn’t one of my best students…

As for programming, I’ve shown several scripts here including how to cheat at “Hang Man”… That was from 2010, recent in my terms. Some may argue about that. Then there’s the much more recent work on GEBC and a lot of maintenance coding on Beast like migrating to Debian Stretch and backing up TLW’s files. Here’s an example:
Making a gazillion thumbnails for a web-page:#!/bin/bash
for f in *jp* *png;do if [[ ! -f thumbs/$f ]];then echo $f;convert $f -resize 250x167 -quality 80 thumbs/$f;fi ;done

Always will but never did. You always speak how you can, and quote some mythical long-forgotten experience. Come on, show us something you did recently in terms of construction, electrical works, or programming.

I’ve been working with electrical and electronics since the 1960s. I’ve designed and built all kinds of systems. They usually work. A simple solar system to charge Solo is really simple for me from the ephemerides to the inverter. I already have most of the steel in stock. I can even make a hub. For low speed systems like this just a couple of bushings will do.

DrLoser wrote about stepping motors. I’m not sure he has any point. I’ve worked with stepping motors for decades. U of M ran them as two phase motors to position slits in beam of the cyclotron and position other items remotely. They can be used open or closed loop. Typically one would use a switch at both extremes of travel and send cycles to them to track Sun by dead reckoning, so many cycles per hour, say. PASCAL would be an excellent t choice, very simple and reliable.

Kurkosdr wrote, ” the only people who have a reason to want solar panels are people in Nevada getting hammered by air-conditioning costs every summer and who cannot cut back because otherwise they will suffer a heat stroke”.

Nonsense. I want solar so that my driving Solo won’t show up on bills and I want some shade without waiting for trees to grow.

According to Bloomberg Energy, the electricity rates paid by consumers bound by solar contracts increased at a rate higher than retail power supplied by utilities in more than 30 states between April 2015 and April 2016.

Bahaha! Just I had imagined. It’s like the “my Prius will pay for itself in gas savings” scam all over again. In reality, unless you are the kind of person that drives 50 kilometers a day or spends hours in traffic jams, no it won’t. And you will also have a more complex system which by definition requires more maintenance. And, most importantly, you are piling on debt. You see, if you are debt-free but for some reason come across financial hardship, you can just cut back on your driving and take public transport. If you are on debt, the bank will hound you and charge you all kinds of late fees and fees on top of fees ’till they can send you to the cleaners.

The only people who have a reason to want a Prius are people who have to drive a lot every day and cannot cut back, aka Uber drivers (and most of them do… as a regular Uber customer, I am thoroughly familiar with the cramped interior of Priuses). And the only people who have a reason to want solar panels are people in Nevada getting hammered by air-conditioning costs every summer and who cannot cut back because otherwise they will suffer a heat stroke. Everybody else is buying into a manufactured need. If there are minor savings, it is not worth the complexity or going into (more) debt.

I happen to know an apprentice who will be a journeyman in a year or soâ€¦ He might give me a low bid for the experience.

That sounds about right, Bobbie.

Pog: I need a slave. Some young lad who will waste six months of their life for no pay, a bucket of bird-seed, and an incidental amount of industrial methanol.Apprentice: Well, I gotta admit. I like bird-seed. What do I have to do?Pog: Ooh, it’s pretty much like a third grade project, except that it doesn’t involve finger-painting, and it does involve wiring up a solar panel array. And a step motor. And I can help you write the software for the step motor. Maybe.Apprentice: I can hardly wait! Robert — May I call you Tit-Head? — Robert, I have dreamed of this all my life! I am not yet a journeyman, and yet you can show me the way!Pog: Do you know how to boil a frog, slowly?Apprentice: No, master! No! I do not! Show me, Master!
Does it involve spot welding?

Be fair, Wiz, Robert’s experience in practically any area at all is embarrassingly close to zero.
Why should we pick on his incidental ignorance when it comes to …
… wait a minute …
… Well now.
Anything at all?

“After 15 years you have a working system for another decade and swapping panels costs much less than installing controls, cables and mounts. ”

And you know this…how? Your experience is non-existent in the area. The simple fact of the matter is that a solar array is another system that needs to be maintained just like the central system in your home. it MAY last you longet than 15 years, but just like is the case with older central systems, it might die tomorrow in a way that is not resurrect-able.

A very good point, as central inverters typically come with five-year limited warranties, string inverters about 10 years and microinverters 20 years.

Same with the batteries, depending on their usage, individual cells may last 3-5 years, perhaps 10-12, buy anything beyond 20-years is questionable. I use to do battery capacity testing, and was a HUGE advocate for plate desulfurization equipment, but now a lot of inverter manufacturers incorporate such means already. So it is no longer necessary.

Robert has no real world experience in solar arrays, batteries, generators or electricity in general. Intentionally wanting to bypass a residential CSA inspection, by way paying off a family member is a crime!

Do tell us Robert. These Chinese solar panels, are they CSA inspected?

Heh, this is all Robert thinks about all day, GET AND GET. Nothing is ever giving back, even to FLOSS. Imagine if all FLOSS people were as stingy and miserly as Robert. There would be no such thing as Linux.

And Robert, once again you are failing to account for the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There is no such thing as free electricity, as you must work to obtain it.

You, Robert, are either senile or ignorantly stupid, whereby I call into question your alleged physics teaching. No physics instructor or professor I ever met, would EVER mention the notion of “free electricity”.

DrLoser wrote, “my bill for electricity doesnâ€™t come to $276 â€“ $40 = $235 per month.”
I was calculating the interest. After 15 years you have a working system for another decade and swapping panels costs much less than installing controls, cables and mounts. So the cost per month is (275*15)/25=165 with no taxes or extra fees. Further, in some places you can sell or use the full output, not just what you use, and I still think you can get it for less.

Get it in the plan and an electrical contractor will provide labour and materials and it will pass inspection.

You are full of completely irrelevant details, aren’t you, Robert? Don’t you think the mentally deficient eight year olds out there (ie Fifi) could work that out for themselves? And so what? It proves nothing.

Even if it does cost $40K, @3% interest, the cost is ~$40/month. Get a 15-year mortgage and get cheaper and eventually $free electricity.

I must have missed something here. Over forty years, this still comes out at $143 per month. Over 15 years, it’s $275 a month — leaving out fees and so on. Now, I don’t know about you, Robert, but my bill for electricity doesn’t come to $276 – $40 = $235 per month.

And as Grece points out, at the end of that 15 year period, your solar panels are effectively knackered and need replacement. Some bargain that is.

Even if it does cost $40K, @3% interest, the cost is ~$40/month. Get a 15-year mortgage and get cheaper and eventually $free electricity.

Pog being clueless again. Why would anyone tack on an additional forty grand to their mortgage, just so they can say they have solar?

NOPE, it was due to alleged lower electrical rates; but as I stated previously, net metering is becoming a thing in the past and SolarCity are jacking up rates to cover their costs and profit margins. In turn, the end-user is having to pay a higher tier, over what the utility would have charged to begin with.

The average solar energy system size in the U.S is approximately 5 kilowatts. Based on the average price of $3.16/watt, a 5kW system would cost $11,060 after tax credits.

Below are some average 2017 quotes for other solar energy systems by size:

But just remember, solar arrays for your home are built on UL 1741 and IEEE 1547 standards. When you local area loses power due to storms, your solar array MUST disconnect from the grid and shutdown. So this means no power for you!

I went so far as to plan to incorporate a Russelectric 30msec. disconnect, but SolarCity would not let me mess with their design, nor did they want me to pay outright in cash, as they wanted a 30-year lease agreement.

Additionally, when you go to sell or buy a home, that has a SolarCity array. It can disqualify individuals, or not even allow you to sell your home. Why?…would wants to take on a second mortgage. In most cases, the sellers have to pay off the lease so as to sell the home. I hope people have enough equity in their home.

The Wiz wrote, “there is a big difference between chinese imports made to american specs and standards and what is made for local consumption.”

Nope. It’s just a sticker to them. The Chinese have been blamed for years for copying what works and now the Wiz accuses them of not copying… Puzzling. The Chinese have no problems exporting all over the world because their stuff works. There were a few problems with my tractor but that was a tiny supplier. PV panels are sold by the millions everywhere. The issues of quality have been ironed out ages ago. Competition and mass production makes the price low, not quality.

The Wiz wrote, “Most people have neither the expertise or the desire to do something as complicated as design and install their own solar panel system complete with tie in to their home electrical system all of which has to pass inspection in the municipality that they live in.”

Get it in the plan and an electrical contractor will provide labour and materials and it will pass inspection. Even if it does cost $40K, @3% interest, the cost is ~$40/month. Get a 15-year mortgage and get cheaper and eventually $free electricity. Electricians have a fluctuating revenue. Given the opportunity to catch the wave of solar generation I bet many will look into the details. I happen to know an apprentice who will be a journeyman in a year or so… He might give me a low bid for the experience.

As far as US imports from china, there is a big difference between chinese imports made to american specs and standards and what is made for local consumption.

Then again, the US spec’d importa are probably too rich for youor cheapskake blood.

Getting back to the topic at hand…

“Just buy it and install it or install it as you build your new home.”

Most people have neither the expertise or the desire to do something as complicated as design and install their own solar panel system complete with tie in to their home electrical system all of which has to pass inspection in the municipality that they live in.

So right now that $20-50K cost is reality, unless you make a deal with one of those solar energy providers

The Wiz’s country, USA imports $30-$40billion every month from China. They must like the quality of those goods or the trade would dry up quickly. Yes, 2017 numbers are up about 10% over 2016. That’s healthy growth.

More facts not in evidence. Here, Alibaba can help you. See? 300 watt panels for $47 USD, 15â…” US cents/watt. How does that get you to $35K to power a home? How does it take 14 years to break even? At 10 cents per kWh, that will take two or three years to break even. Then it’s $free energy for decades.

Grece wrote, “Solar leasing escalators â€” which can outpace the rate of inflation â€” force some leased rooftop solar customers to pay more, not less, than what they would have otherwise paid for electricity.”

Huh? Why would anyone lease solar power equipment when it’s so affordable? Just buy it and install it or install it as you build your new home. Put it on the mortgage. Rates are low these days. Just about anyone can afford a mortgage.

That’s all I need to read. Nothing based on factual date, all superfluous fluff.

Once the utilities all but cancel net metering, and the federal, state and country subsidies dry-up. Solar will go tits-up, as they will be no incentive to install. Who wants the spend $35K to power one’s home, when the payback takes 14+ years. ($200/month utility bill)

Without a smorgasbord of generous tax credits, subsidies and local incentives granted by politicians and regulators, leased rooftop solar would make zero financial sense for consumers. The systems are hyped by legions of salesmen promising a solar hedge against the rising costs of utility-supplied electricity. Yet too often, their sales pitches overstate expected savings with exaggerated predictions of the rate of increase in electric utility bills. Solar leasing escalators â€” which can outpace the rate of inflation â€” force some leased rooftop solar customers to pay more, not less, than what they would have otherwise paid for electricity.

According to Bloomberg Energy, the electricity rates paid by consumers bound by solar contracts increased at a rate higher than retail power supplied by utilities in more than 30 states between April 2015 and April 2016.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. Now that I'm retired I still use GNU/Linux on every computer in my home except the smartphones which run Android/Linux.

Lately, I've been giving lots of thought to the world I inherited and which I will leave to my descendants. I'm planting grass, trees, flowers and vegetables in my large lot and I've ordered a Solo EV. I plan to charge my Solo by means of a tracking solar array. Life is good if you have a purpose. I do.